Seven foot ceilings PLEASE HELP!!

Hi there I just joined recently and I am really enjoying the useful information I've came across on this forum. I have a fairly big outbuilding ( 38 X 20 ) to build my studio in and have calculated golden cuboid dimensions for my control room and studio, however my ceiling height with hung ceiling will be 7 ft. in the control room and a max of 7.5 ft. in the studio. My rooms sizes are 1) control room double walled with splayed walls going from 10ft to 12ft in width is .. 16 x 11 average x 7 2) studio 19.6 x 19 x 7'10'. The studio dimensions are given in total from origianl walls, meaning minus the iso booths I need to build to break up the 19 X 19 square nightmare. From all the research I've done it seems that the common opinion is that I'll never be able to achieve a good sounding room with a 7 ft. ceiling. I'm dumping alot of money, and time into this building as I'm sure we all are here, but am I wasting my time with ceilings this low? Any suggestions or insight positive or negative would make my day? Thanks. Flip Media

I don't think it's hopeless. You've got enough overhead space to hang a cloud on the ceiling. Even if it's just a 2" thick cloud hung 2" down from the ceiling, it'll do a lot. Obviously more head height would sound better, but I don't think it's a waste of your time to do this in a 7' high space. If you've got the outbuilding already out there, and you're basically remodeling the interior, then you're already saving a lot of money as opposed to razing the building to the ground and starting over... My advice would be to make the studio as close to perfect in the remaining 2 dimensions. It sounds like you have enough space to do this. Hope this helps! Kase www.minemusic.net

however my ceiling height with hung ceiling will be 7 ft.

so how is this ceiling built? I can't imagine someone building an outbuilding with a 7' ceiling. cheers john

Here are some rough non proportional plans made in mspaint. It's a strange building since the tarred roof building is an addition. The actual ceiling heights are control room 7'6", Studio Recording area, 7'10". We were planning on building our ceiling beneath the actual ceiling since its already well insulated and finished. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks for your replies. Flip

And inside it look sroughly as such....

Is the hirgth of the celing to the structural members? If so, you can treat them as archictural features and gain extra height that way. That also gives the option of putting the control room with extra space.

The ceilings in the control room and studio area are 8ft to the rafters. We are planning on hanging our new ceiling on our new walls which will hang below the existing ceiling since its already well insulated and acoustically tiled we figured why open it up to gain 3 inches? Hope this helps. regards Sean.

depending on how serious of a studio you intend to build, and how much noise you plan to make inside, rock, metal, and how close you are to neighbors, you may want to consider that investing a large chunk of money in equipment may not be utilized in a poorly designed building. 7 foot is not optimum for a studio specially if you plan on doing long hours of work, if you have to install a ceiling that will keep noise from going out your existing roofing into a neighbor's living room. The previous suggestion of leaving the rafters at 8 foot, would be the best if you can assure no noise will be bothering anyone. if not, is there a way to dig the floor down a few feet to gain extra height? perhaps if you slant the added ceiling from the mix position towards the back so that it starts at 7ft from the mix and ends at 7.5ft, you may at least help battle standing waves. again if you're investing serious money, you don't want to skimp on the building. your room is just as important as your equipment.

Hi folks, sorry for the delay, I've been very busy building the studio and I am happily approaching the end. Given my budget and time frame, everything has gone well. I have taken some pretty costly shortcuts with materials but I am optomistic given the distance from my neighbours. Simply put I built this studio on the super cheap (5,000) and I'll soon know if its effective enough. All the walls are single wood stud on 16" centers with 1/2 on the inside, 5/8's on the outside (thats right single leaf!!) with safe and sound insulation in between. I hung the ceilings same deal except on 2ft centers. I have seven foot ceilings and it doesn't seem stuffy given the size of the building. I'm planning on hanging clouds too. (yikes) We actually installed a window A/C unit into our outer wall, formulated a duct system, sealing it really well of course and ran them to all three rooms. It works great and its super quiet and really really cheap!!. It gets worse or better depending on your perspective here? For studio glass I got two patio doors with different thicknesses of glass (35"x72") removed their frames and installed them 8 inches apart on separate walls with the control room side glass angled as recommended (three degrees). It also works great, patio doors are double paned and sealed with rubber. Once again pretty effective given the alternatives...cost $30.00 dollars used. For my studio doors I got hold of some massive solid metal doors from a demo'd highschool framed them in with 2"x2" and attached carpet underlay to the inside of the them with a normal door handle assembly. They seal very well indeed and cost again very little. We ran 12-2 gauge metal shielded conduit to nine separate circuits and surface mounted all our boxes and thats where were at now. I know it must sound ridiculous compared to some of the money being spent by other people on these forums but it was either build it now for five or go get a job outside of music for a few years and hopefully save up enough to build it somewhat right, lol. Thanks to everyone here for all of the great information and patience, I wish I could have put more of it to use but my pockets are shallow. I'll post pics soon and will be sure to let you know if I can mix at night at a comfortable volume. Cheers..